


Up Ghost Creek Without a Spirit Box

by punk_rock_yuppie



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avid Haunted Object Collector!Ryan, Banter, Get together fic, Haunted Object Decommissioner!Shane, Heavy on the Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18854914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punk_rock_yuppie/pseuds/punk_rock_yuppie
Summary: The thing is, no one was supposed to be home.Or, Shane specializes in decommissioning haunted objects and Ryan is his latest assignment.





	Up Ghost Creek Without a Spirit Box

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to mbmbam (ep 298 or 297 I think?) and they talked about a haunted doll decommissioner, and then this happened. It's just a very silly little AU I thought up, and left open ended so I can add to it if I ever feel like it (who knows, my muse is so fickle)
> 
> big thanks to Hannah for beta'ing!
> 
> enjoy!

The thing is, no one was supposed to be home.

Shane had shown up on the doorstep to the frankly _absurdly_ large house (listen, he knows who supposedly lives here, he read the file, this is just _ridiculous_ ), fully anticipating it to be empty and therefore his job to be easy. So Shane had done the courtesy of knocking, and when no answer came, he let himself into the house after a quick bout of lock picking. From there, he had dug his sensor out of his jacket pocket and held it out in front of him—

Except in the time it had taken him to dig the stupid box from his pocket, someone had appeared at the foot of the stairs on the other side of the room.

That someone is now staring incredulously at Shane. “Uh, what the fuck?”

Shane groans. “You weren’t supposed to be home.”

The man, clad in ill-fitting tee and worse-fitting sweatpants, strides forward. His brow is drawn together angrily and he’s spewing slightly shaking threats at Shane as he gets closer. It’s the usual sort of rants that happen when Shane miscalculates and drops in a not-so-empty house. He’s heard it all before so he tunes out.

Until the man jabs a finger against his chest and half-shouts, “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

Shane curls his fingers around the man’s wrist and pushes his hand away. “I’m aware,” he replies dryly.

The man falters only slightly; his voice barely shakes as he asks, “What the fuck are you doing in my house?!”

Shane sighs. “Are you Ryan Steven Bergara?”

He blanches, which is as good an answer as any. Shane decides to just get this over with.

“I’m Officer Shane Madej with the Bureau of Spectral Maintenance, and it has been determined that you are in possession of an unlawful number of haunted items. I’ve been sent to fix this problem.”

“Are you gonna kill me?” Ryan asks in a painfully small voice.

A laugh actually bursts from Shane. “Oh my god, _no_.” The laughter bubbles up again at the very thought and he has to tilt his head back and take a deep breath to keep himself under control. “I specialize in haunted object decommissioning.”

Ryan blinks. “Are you a demon?”

Shane repeats himself, slower, “I specialize in haunted object decommissioning.”

“That’s not a no,” Ryan points out.

“It’s not,” Shane agrees, just to fuck with him, because _why not_. This job is pretty dull, all things considered; scaring someone into thinking he’s a demon is kind of fun. “Any other questions, or are you gonna let me do my job?”

“What exactly is your job?” Ryan asks. He must see the irritation flit across Shane’s face because he hurries to continue. “I just mean, _how_ are you gonna, uh, decommission my things? And why?”

Shane rubs his hand over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose. “How? Trade secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Ryan’s face drains of color again and Shane groans.

“Christ, I’m kidding, lighten up. It’s just...hard to explain. As for the why, however, you have an unreasonably large collection of haunted or cursed items, and it’s unlawful to keep them housed in one place, in such close proximity to each other.”

“By whose law?” Ryan asks.

“Also hard to explain,” Shane says. “Can you show me where your collection is housed, or do I need to find them myself?” He holds up his sensor box with a disdainful expression, but Ryan only stares at him with wide eyes.

“What does that do?” He asks with interest and maybe even an edge of awe in his voice.

“It senses spectral energy and guides me to it. Supposedly.”

Ryan seems to snap out of his starry-eyed reverie of the little box. “Supposedly?”

“It’s horseshit.”

Ryan stares at him. “What.”

“The box,” Shane says as he waves it in his hand. “It’s horseshit.” With that, he steps around Ryan and heads toward the first door he sees, which turns out to be a hall closet jam-packed with coats and shoes and other useless things, but none of it’s haunted.

“How is it horseshit?” Ryan asks as he trails behind Shane.

“Because it has never once led me to any kind of spectral energy,” Shane says as he moves onto the next door, which is a powder room and useless to him. He keeps moving and Ryan keeps up with him.

“So how do you find anything?”

“Just like this,” Shane says as he opens the next door with a slight flourish and cheeky grin. “Nice kitchen,” he observes before letting the door fall shut again.

“You just…walk around people’s houses until you find what you’re looking for?”

“Yup.” Shane does a cursory glance around. “Although, you could just tell me where the things I’m looking for are, and save us both some time.”

Ryan says, “That wouldn’t be nearly as interesting,” at the same time his eyes flick towards the stairs.

“Upstairs, then.” He takes the stairs two at a time thanks to his long legs but Ryan still doesn’t end up far behind. “Jesus, how do you even afford this place? I know you’re technically outside the city but still, rent prices aren’t that cheap.”

“Family left it to me,” Ryan says. “Or, well, my grandpa left it to my dad but my dad doesn’t need it so he lets me use it.”

“Uh huh,” Shane says. “Which room?”

“Not telling you.”

“Of course not. You wanna hold this?” He asks as he holds out the sensor to Ryan, who immediately takes it and starts to look it over with a keen eye. “Don’t take it apart, it’s not some TV remote you can just tinker with.”

“Got it,” is Ryan’s absent reply, and when Shane walks over to the nearest door, Ryan doesn’t follow. Or at least, not physically. As Shane opens the door and takes a quick look around inside, Ryan’s voice catches up to him, “Does it use like, radiowaves to trace spectral entities?”

“It doesn’t _do_ anything, I told you that,” Shane retorts. Whatever room he’s walked into is some sort of office-slash-gym, smelling stale in a way that speaks either to disuse or _too much_ use. He cracks open the window before hurrying out. “Why are all your doors closed anyway? That’s kind of weird, dude.”

“No, what’s weird is seeing figures standing in doorways when you’re least expecting it, _dude_. Oh, did I say weird? I meant fucking terrifying.”

Shane snorts. “That’s just your brain playing tricks on you.” The next two rooms are another bathroom—and really, what sort of guest bathroom has a double vanity and a _clawfoot tub_ —and then another hall closet. “Jesus,” Shane mutters to himself.

“It’s not my _brain_ !” Ryan snaps. He’s still turning the box over in his hands. “I live in a _haunted house_ full of _haunted objects_. I think it stands to reason that I’d see spirits roaming around my house!”

Shane stops, hand on the doorknob of the next room. “Except spirits aren’t real, so it’s just your brain playing tricks on you.”

“What do you mean spirits aren’t _real_? What the fuck are you doing in my house then?” Ryan’s tone is sapped of wonder and instead full of anger; if Shane wasn’t so used to it, he might actually be alarmed.

“I _mean_ ,” he starts off in a sharp tone, “That yes, you have a plethora of haunted objects—allegedly, since I can’t find a single fucking thing—and sure, _maybe_ this house is haunted. That does not mean spirits, as in actual things you can _see_ , are, as you put it, ‘roaming the halls.’”

Ryan stops his angry stomping toward Shane abruptly. “What?”

Shane tilts his head back and counts down from ten. “I wish they would just let me bring my stupid pamphlet so I didn’t have to explain this _every time._ ”

“Wait, pamphlet?”

“I keep telling my boss that I made this handy little trifold to give to people we have to deal with but no,” Shane drawls, annoyed. “No, the printing would cost too much, people wouldn’t read it anyway, it’s useless, Madej, let it go!”

Shane rests his forehead against the door that he still hasn’t opened. He’s aware of Ryan’s eyes on him, just like he’s aware of Ryan’s mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“I’d read a pamphlet,” Ryan says eventually.

“Great.” Shane stands up straight again. “I’ll let my boss know.” He finally turns the doorknob and the door swings open and immediately, Shane knows he’s found the right room. “Fucking finally.”

He walks in and Ryan’s close behind. “What’re you gonna do?” Ryan asks. His voice is small again, unsure. “Some of these things are, like, kind of important to me.”

“I’m not going to damage anything.” Shane takes a stroll through the shelves upon shelves. He trails his fingertips along the slightly dusty edges and worms his way between some tight fits, careful to keep his promise of not breaking anything. “Jesus, how do you even accumulate this much shit?”

“eBay, mostly.”

“Of course.” Shane finally makes it back to the room. “Okay, here’s how this works. I take an item, put a couple drops of this—” He waggles the bottle suddenly in his hand, delighting in Ryan’s surprised expression “—on it, and then trap the spectral essence in this.” He holds up his other hand, waggling what he knows looks like a pill box.

Predictably, Ryan’s brow furrows.

“It’s—”

“Hard to explain?” Ryan tries.

“Exactly.” Shane puts his back to Ryan and observes the room. “I don’t normally do this, but are there any things you wouldn’t _mind_ getting broken? It’s unlikely, but I might as well ask.”

Ryan comes around him and starts to work quickly through the shelves. Before long, Ryan’s back with his arms full of items. “These work?”

Shane nods and gestures to the small table in one corner of the room. “Just dump them there. We’ll start with these and see if it’s enough.”

“How will you know when it’s enough?”

Shane shrugs. “You can just kinda feel it.”

Shane falls into the one chair by the table and starts to work. He opens all the tabs on the pill box and sets it aside before dragging the first item closest to him. Before he starts, he looks up at Ryan. “A warning.”

Ryan looks at him, eyes wide and expression serious.

“Some of your shit might not be haunted. Don’t get too bummed about it.”

Ryan’s mouth drops open. “Seriously?”

“You seem like you’d take it personally, so I’m just letting you know ahead of time.” Shane turns back to the object and uncorks the vial in his left hand. He tips it just enough to let two drops fall onto the top of the porcelain cat’s head. To his surprise, the reaction is almost instant: the cat statue shakes in his hand, clanking against the table where he holds it, and slowly an essence in a color Shane still can’t think of a name for slips into the pill box.

He snaps that tab shut and passes the cat to Ryan. “See? Easy as pie.”

Ryan takes the statue with a shaking hand. “Uh.”

Shane doesn’t comment and instead grabs the next item. He works through the pile slowly but surely—and sure enough, not every item is haunted. Shane doesn’t know if it’s the warning, or if Ryan really just wasn’t as invested as he thought, but the items that aren’t haunted don’t seem to impact him as much as Shane expected. Eventually, Ryan disappears and returns ten minutes later with a folding chair. He sets it up next to Shane and watches him work avidly.

“Tell me about yourself,” Shane says as Ryan gets up to fetch a second round of items. At the same time, Shane pockets the first pill box and produces another.

“Like what?”

“Like why you collect so much haunted shit?”

Ryan grins sheepishly as he comes back to the table. “Well...it’s kind of stupid.”

“Oh trust me, I know.”

Ryan glares at him playfully. “I’m scared of ghosts. And demons. And like, Bigfoot or Mothman or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Shane echoes faintly.

Ryan shrugs and fiddles with one of the trinkets, a plastic bobble head toy that’s dull and scratched up. “Shit’s freaky, man.”

“If you’re so scared of it, why collect all this? That’s like basically asking to get haunted, if that was a thing that spirits could do.”

“Well until you showed up in my house, I thought that _was_ a thing spirits could do.”

“Right, exactly. Why subject yourself to that?”

Ryan’s mouth twists with uncertainty. He looks embarrassed. “If I have them, then they aren’t hurting other people, I guess. I tried to find ones that were, like, making people unhappy or feel unsafe.”

“But you’re okay feeling unsafe?”

Ryan shrugs again. “I guess so, yeah.” He finally falls into the chair beside Shane, seeming drained of all his energy. “But, if the spirits I’ve been seeing are just in my head, then I guess it’s not as bad.”

“Just because they can’t actually physically manifest for you to see them doesn’t mean the entities aren’t dangerous.” The next item bolsters his point, the little pristine plate with a floral design in the center: it rattles and shakes and nearly flies out of Shane’s hand when he splashes it with the liquid before the energy flows into the box. “It’s part of why I was dispatched here.”

“Dispatched,” Ryan repeats with a soft laugh.

“Yes, _dispatched_.” Shane grins. He gestures to the pile of items on the table. “You had too much spectral energy in one space. That’s even more unsafe.”

“How?”

So Shane tells him, about gathering too much power in one place, about houses that have blown up from it or people who have died—mysteriously—in homes full of too much spectral energy. The list of consequences is long and varied and Shane only gets a quarter of the way through before Ryan asks him to stop.

“Guess I should probably stop collecting these things then, huh?”

“Probably,” Shane agrees. He sets the vial down for a moment and rummages around in his pocket until he procures a slightly wrinkled piece of cheap cardstock. “I’m not supposed to do this, but you could give me a call if you come across anything you think is _actually_ dangerous, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“What _can_ you do?” Ryan asks, and Shane is pretty sure he’s not imagining the undercurrent of innuendo in Ryan’s tone, as ridiculous as it seems.

“This,” Shane says as he lets another two drops hits the next item—the plastic little bobble head, this time. He grins up at Ryan and that’s right about when everything goes to shit.

Instead of a faint wisp of spectral energy flowing out of the item and into the pill box, the fucking thing bursts in his hand. Shane barely gets a glimpse of the deep green ball of energy before he’s diving at Ryan and sending them both crashing to the floor. He’s pretty sure the chair breaks and he definitely knocked the wind out of both himself and Ryan.

“What the fuck?” Ryan says.

“Sorry, it’ll only take a second.” Shane looks over his shoulder and it’s a small comfort that the energy ball hasn’t grown in size. But the pill box also hasn’t snatched it up, which isn’t great. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?!” Ryan squawks. “Do something!”

“I can’t!” Shane looks back down at Ryan. Frankly, it’s ridiculous, being pressed on top of the other man and their faces close enough for their noses to brush. He really can’t do anything but hope the energy flits away elsewhere or gets sucked into the box, but he can’t exactly tell Ryan that. So he says, “Hey, you wanna go on a date sometime?”

 _“What?”_ Ryan’s eyes are wide and full of fear but his expression quickly shifts to shock, more pleased than scared.

“A date,” Shane repeats. “With me. After this.”

Ryan blinks owlishly at him.

“We could get coffee, or, uh. Dinner?”

“Dinner,” Ryan says, tone flat then curious. “If we survive?”

“We’re definitely gonna survive.”

“And you’re not a demon?”

“No, oh my god.” Shane dips his head to press his forehead to Ryan’s clavicle before leaning back. “Definitely not a demon.”

“How did you get your job?”

Shane sighs. “Really? There’s a mass of spectral energy behind us right now and I’ve just asked you on a date and you wanna know how I got my job?”

“The orb is gone.”

“It’s not an orb—wait, what?” Shane sits up and looks behind them and sure enough, the deep green light is now contained the pill box. “Oh, thank god.”

“Uh huh.”

“You still wanna know I got my job?” Shane doesn’t move from kneeling between Ryan’s legs.

“Yep.” Ryan sits up, grinning.

“Go on a date with me, then.”

“Alright.”

“Wait, really?”

Ryan gets to his feet and extends a hand to Shane to help him up. “Right now?”

“I’m on the clock.”

Ryan waves a dismissive hand. “What your bosses don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“They know all,” Shane says, going for cryptic but maybe just coming across tired, he’s not sure. Ryan’s arched eyebrow gives nothing away. “But okay. Lunch date it is.”

Ryan beams. “Then after, we can come back and you can finish up this,” he gestures to the table. “And you won’t even have to break into my house to do it.”

“But then where’s the fun?” Shane asks. He pockets the recorked vial and the pill box and drops them into the pockets of his long coat. “Alright, c’mon.”

They make it as far as the front door to Ryan’s place before he asks another question. “So, your pockets…?”

“You ever seen _Mary Poppins_?”

Ryan’s jaw drops. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Maybe.” He gets a few paces ahead of Ryan as they head toward his sleek black station wagon. “Guess you’ll have to find out.”

Ryan catches up to him quickly. “Guess I will. I’ve been making a list of questions on my phone.”

“Careful.” Shane lets his tone edge into a somewhat serious warning. “I’m starting to think you might be using me to find out more about the bureau.”

Ryan stops him before they reach the car with a hand on his elbow. “I’m not,” he assures, before leaning up to kiss Shane softly on the lips. “But I _am_ curious. About you, and your job. But mostly you.”

A blush warms Shane’s cheeks. “Cool.”

Ryan beams, and Shane thinks—

_Never been so happy for someone to be home when they weren’t supposed to be._


End file.
